Getting Ready to Sell? Increase Your Home Value!

Healthy, Wealthy and Wise: How a Dry Basement Adds Value to Your Home

Your basement is not just a concrete-lined hole in the ground. It is valuable space. If it’s wet, it can cost you big-time, upstairs and down, and its damp, moldy air can harm your family’s health. If your basement is dry, on the other hand, it can be whatever you want it to be, and your house will fetch a higher price.

You Breathe Basement Air – Like It or Not

As warm air rises in a home it leaks out into the upper levels. New air must enter to replace the air that escaped. In fact, in an average home about half of the air escapes each hour out of the upper levels. This creates a suction at the lower levels to draw in replacement air. In older, leaky homes the air exchange rate can be so high that a full air exchange takes place in a single hour.

What this “stack effect” does is create an airflow in your home from bottom to top. Air from the
basement is drawn upward into the first floor, and then to the second floor. Of course it dilutes with other air in your home, but building scientists say that up to 50% of the air you breathe on the first floor is air that came from the basement. If you have hot air heating with ductwork, the air mixes even more thoroughly throughout the house.

Therefore, whatever is in your basement air is in your house and affecting you, whether you spend much time in the basement or not. If there’s high humidity downstairs, there is higher humidity upstairs than there would be otherwise. If there is mold in the basement, there are mold spores
upstairs. If there are damp odors downstairs – you get the idea.

“Just Add Water”: Negative Effects of a Damp Basement

Since air flows into the upper levels of your home from the basement, it brings the humidity from the basement with it. The effects on your home can include:

• Dust Mites (the number one indoor allergen)
• Sticking (swollen) doors and windows
• Smelly damp carpets
• Buckling hardwood floors
• Condensation/rotting/mold in your attic (as humid air escapes into your attic it can condense against the cold ceiling or roof)
• Frost or condensation and mold on the inside of windows in cool weather
• Increased cooling bills (damp air takes more energy to cool)
• Increased heating bills (damp air takes more energy to heat)
• Mold upstairs
• Decreased life of roof sheathing and shingles
• Decreased life of the paint on the outside of your house
• Aggravated asthma and allergies

The damage in the basement itself is obvious. The above list represents many of the effects upstairs that you may not associate with your wet or damp basement.

Your Basement: Extra Space for Living!

What could you do with your basement?

10% is a Lot of Money!
Because buyers view your home with a wet basement as a fixer-upper, they will pay you 10% less than otherwise – that’s if they buy it at all. Using this example, then

Value of Your Home	The Cost of Not Fixing Your Wet Basement in Property Value Alone
$100,000	$10,000
$150,000	$15,000
$200,000	$20,000
$300,000	$30,000
$400,000	$40,000
$500,000	$50,000
$600,000	$60,000

You get the idea. And this does not take into account all the property damage and other aggravation that leak causes you while you live there! Moral of the story: Fixing your wet basement is a lot cheaper than not fixing your wet basement.

Let us help add value to your home and give you peace of mind by filling out a contact form for a free estimate or call us today.